Trump Administration Weighs Barring Cubans, Haitians From U.S. As Part of New Travel Ban

The Trump administration is weighing including Cuba and Haiti on a list of countries whose nationals will face restrictions to enter the country, sources with knowledge of the ongoing discussions told the Miami Herald.

Cuba, which is on a State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism, might end up on a “red list” of countries facing a total travel ban, while Haiti might end up on a less restrictive version of the list, the sources said.

Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump directed officials in the administration to come up with a list of nations that could be part of an expanded travel ban similar to the one he introduced during his first term for countries with Muslim majorities, based on the idea that they have a weak security apparatus to do background checks.

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The earlier version of the travel ban during the first Trump administration was later expanded to include North Korea and members of the Venezuelan government and their relatives. At the time, the U.S. government cited Venezuela’s lack of cooperation in providing information to verify whether its migrants posed a national security or public safety threat to the U.S.

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The travel ban under discussion stems from a Jan. 30 executive order Trump signed ordering the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to identify “countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”

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In a recent email to its members, the American Association of University Professors warned that the new ban, though primarily targeted at Muslim-majority countries, could possibly include Venezuela and Haiti. {snip}

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Since 2017, the U.S. Embassy in Havana has not issued non-immigrant visas for family visits or business travel, with a few exceptions made for activists, independent private entrepreneurs and humanitarian cases. The refugee program for Cubans has also been suspended, but the Biden administration resumed a family reunification program allowing Cubans to emigrate to the United States legally.

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While details remain sketchy on the criteria the administration plans to use, those familiar with the pending travel ban say it is supposedly based on the rationale that the countries that make the list lack the ability to properly perform background checks on individuals traveling to the U.S. In the case of Haitians who came through the Biden-era humanitarian program, several were stopped at the airport in Haiti by police before being allowed to board flights and once in the U.S. were subject to further checks.

Haitian nationals who hold nonimmigrant U.S. visas are also subjected to tightened scrutiny, which has earned the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince the reputation of having one of the highest U.S. visa refusal rates in the region.

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